Shanghai’s Cathedral School for Girls: A Ballerina, A Sci-Fi Author, and Mao
Well, well. They’re refurbishing the Cathedral School for Girls on Avenue Haig/Huashan Lu, and look who’s popped up over the entrance!
The posh Cathedral School for Girls (sister school to the Cathedral School for Boys) was established around 1918 on Yates Road/Shimen Yi Lu and moved to the Avenue Haig premises in 1931. The 1934 Shanghai Directory lists 6 form mistresses, 4 kindergarten mistresses, a singing mistress, games mistress, French mistress, and science mistress.
Famous Cathedral alumni include Peggy Hookham, who left Shanghai in 1933 to study ballet seriously, and became the world-famous ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn. (Her father worked for British-American Tobacco, whose building still stands on Museum Road/Huqiu Road).
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